HEAVEN OR HEALTH

A Colorado ophthalmologist lasers gaping holes in Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare, prescribes a new two-tiered health care system and Dutch-uncles ridiculously overinsured Americans.

The book’s title doesn’t quite work, but everything else in first-time author Beyer’s sharp-eyed look at health care in the United States is revealing to a fault, and, as a reader might expect, it’s not a pretty picture. Medicare and Medicaid are Ponzi schemes and deficit makers that augur higher taxes. Obamacare, while well-intentioned, is a poison pill that will drive private doctors out of business as its myriad regulations diminish the overall quality of health care. With lobbyists running interference, Big Pharma and insurers are running riot gaming the system, with some doctors joining in. Meanwhile, government officials and these same insurers, clueless about what doctors face, are making the rules and setting fees. Honest, everyday physicians who are doing no better than plumbers and their hapless patients stand at the very bottom of a trickle-down, gazillion dollar, third-party-payer health system that is dysfunctional in every way. This may sound familiar, but what sets Beyer’s rendition apart is the cogent, lucid manner in which he indignantly makes his case. Though he occasionally sounds like a screamer at the back of the hall, what really shows through is a rugged individualist, old-line Western conservative with naturopathic leanings. Get off your dern butts, he says, and learn to eat and live right. He advises reserving the government safety net for the relative few who are truly sick, disabled or mentally incapacitated. For the rest, tax-exempt personal health savings accounts can fund medical care while giving incentives not to overconsume. This system cuts out third parties and leaves it up to patients and their physicians to set fees in free market style. Throw in a modicum of high-deductible, catastrophic insurance and most people will have all the protection they need, plus health costs will plummet. The plan looks good on paper, but how will it take effect? Which presidential candidate will heed the call? Or is this just a somewhat Colorado-centric eye doc crying in the wilderness.

A highly illuminating book that deserves the widest possible audience, not that it would necessarily make any difference.